It’s easier than ever to access national-level data that may be useful to ATE projects and centers for planning, benchmarking, or evaluation. A few of these resources are listed below:
The National Center for Education Statistics (nces.ed.gov) Digest of Education Statistics provides information about U.S. students and education institutions. The IPEDS system is a tool that focuses on postsecondary students and . The NCES website also contains a variety of data related to education from K-12 schools and 2- and 4-year colleges.
American FactFinder (factfinder.census.gov) provides access to all variables collected by the U.S. Census and, on a more regular basis, the American Community Survey.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov) provides access to data on employment, earnings, and industry activity.
The National Student Clearinghouse (studentclearinghouse.org) offers a subscription-based service for tracking students and their history. Your institution may already be a subscriber to this service.
College institutional research offices often collect information about students, including demographics, enrollment, course completions, and grades. Building a relationship with this office at your institution could help you access a range of individual student data.
Shameless self-promotion aside, EvaluATE (evalu-ate.org/annual_survey) administers an annual survey to all ATE grants, collecting data that could be used for benchmarking against the ATE community or just within your discipline.
Corey Smith 
Doctoral Associate, The Evaluation Center
Corey Smith is a doctoral associate with EvaluATE. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in evaluation at Western Michigan University. His primary responsibilities with EvaluATE are to administer and manage the annual ATE survey, analyze data collected through that survey and produce reports, data snapshots and publications based on that data. PI’s may recognize his name from the flurry of nagging emails he sends about the annual survey each January through March.
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EvaluATE is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers 0802245, 1204683, 1600992, and 1841783. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed on this site are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.